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The Hidden Discipline of Helplessness

The Hidden Discipline of Helplessness

Last updated on: October 20, 2026 at 11:11 am by Kathleen Mulhern

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The Hidden Discipline of Helplessness 2026-10-20T11:11:31-06:00 Kathleen Mulhern

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The first, and perhaps the most surprising of these hidden disciplines, is the experience of helplessness. Nothing prepares us for this. Our Bible studies, our prayer lives, our community commitments—all are geared toward fortifying us and infusing within us the strength and vision to tackle the challenges we face with conquering faith.

In Nicholas Kristof’s August 2026 New York Times article, “Meet the Americans Who Can’t Afford Haircuts or Toilet Paper,” we read about several young mothers with multiple children who are homeless or near homeless, and the comments reveal the anxiety of readers who want desperately to eradicate this kind of desperation. But turn the page, and read about the earthquake victims in Colombia, the wildfire victims without insurance, the young parents caring 24/7 for several disabled children, the sexually abused children, and on and on. We should do something! And we can!

Are we supposed to save the world? If so, we’d better do something about ourselves, because the world’s problems are not out there—they’re in here. Are we then supposed to change ourselves?

In Holy Wisdom, the 17th-century English Benedictine Augustine Baker tells the story of Jesuit Baltazar Alvarez, a contemporary of and counselor to Teresa of Avila. Alvarez, due to his deepening prayer experience, became suspected of some newfangled convictions and had to give some explanation of his journey. He relates his own years of dissatisfaction with the “results” of his disciplines and practices, until finally, he says, he learned to come to God “as a beggar.” This posture continued for sixteen years when “he found his heart on the sudden unexpectedly quite changed and dilated, all his disquietness vanished, and his soul, freed from all created things, being filled with an astonishing joy.” A beggar. Full of the knowledge of his helplessness to even change himself.

But we are not alone in this helplessness. Let’s consider Jesus. (Always.) Here is a man who had divinity in his fingertips. A man who could give sight to the blind, raise the dead, heal the sick, restore physical abilities. It’s easy to read the life of Christ and see something akin to a fairy godmother, someone who fixed Mary and Martha’s agonizing distress, who rescued the bleeding woman, who dealt compassionately with so many parents of children who desperately needed a miracle. But Jesus didn’t come as a fixer. He didn’t come with pixie dust and a relentless cheeriness that magically reordered a chaotic and relentlessly cruel world. When we read carefully, we see a Jesus who carefully threaded his way through life, seeking and doing only the Father’s will.

We see Jesus who, though there were many invalids at the pool of Bethesda, only healed one. We see Jesus who knew of the tower of Siloam falling and did nothing to stop it or to rescue the crushed. We see Jesus, who did nothing to deliver Israel from Roman oppression. We see Jesus, who said nothing to Judas about the danger he was in. We see Jesus, who teaches us that we must become as children, the most helpless, to enter the kingdom of heaven. We see Jesus bless the poor in spirit, those who recognize their powerlessness.

Surely Jesus, who could have done anything, looked around him in his full humanity with a visceral shock of helplessness as he surveyed the chaos and suffering of life and knew he could do nothing about most of it. I’m not talking about actual powerlessness. He could have done anything. I’m talking about purpose. He did not come to “make the world a better place.” He did not come to set the world to rights. He did not come to alleviate pain and suffering. He came to do the Father’s will, and that was the silver thread he held fast to as he navigated the vicissitudes of life. Just like us, he knew a human experience of helplessness before the onslaught of human cries. Surely, surely that prayer of Gethsemane—“if it be possible … but not what I want”—must have been prayed many times before about situations he encountered. Only in Gethsemane does he turn his own helplessness before suffering into abandonment.

This helplessness of which I speak is passive, in that it is inflicted upon us by the brokenness of this world, but it is not inactive for all that. This is why I call it a discipline instead of a burden or imposition. We who are called into this kingdom must actively embrace this helplessness as an act of prayer, hope, and grief. It is powerlessness, but not victimization. It is to be borne, as a cross, but not without hope. There is a tension in the helplessness to which we are called—a tension of humility before the sovereign providence of God. He alone can fix the world, and he alone knows how to do it well, and he alone will do it. This does not relieve us of any obligations to alleviate pain, suffering, or the injustices around us. On the contrary, it is only those who do what they can who really suffer under the helplessness of what they cannot do. While the Christian life is one of active obedience and holy trust, it is also one of bearing the burdens around us, of standing with Jesus in prayer asking for the fullness of the Spirit to lead us in the works he has prepared for us to do. And then we ask him to give us the grace to accept our inability to fix the world, to grieve without ceasing for the suffering around us, and to pray that God would hasten the coming of his kingdom.

Photo by Dieter K on Unsplash

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